


Exit Strategy

by Sandrine Shaw (Sandrine)



Category: Spy Game (2001)
Genre: Extra Treat, M/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-16 16:09:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9279344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandrine/pseuds/Sandrine%20Shaw
Summary: It's been seven days since Nathan's gone, and already he's become a ghost story.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fullmoon02](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fullmoon02/gifts).



> fullmoon02 - I've wanted to write post-movie Tom/Nathan fic for this since I first saw _Spy Game_ all the way back in 2002, but somehow, I never got around to it. 15 years later, I'd just rewatched the movie when I saw your prompt, and couldn't resist it!
> 
> Thanks to my wonderful beta glitterburn!

Tom doesn't see the light of day for almost a week after Su Chou, one debriefing after another, first in Hong Kong and later at Langley. There's a quick but thorough medical check to confirm that he'll live, and then he's in and out of interrogation rooms with their whirling tape recorders and blank-faced operatives asking probing questions, half of which Tom doesn't have any answers for. One-way mirrors hide the faces of the higher-ups watching them, but even if he can't see them, their hawk-eyed attention and piercing stares pickle at Tom's neck.

They pretend that getting Tom out had been their idea, that cutting him loose and letting him hang had never been the plan, that Operation Dinner Out had been sanctioned, but Tom's been playing the game for too long not to be able to read between the lines.

#

"What can you tell us about Nathan Muir?" they ask, and Tom shrugs.

"He was my handler, but you knew that." He takes a moment to choose his next words carefully. "I wasn't keen on his methods. I haven't been in touch with him since 1985." 

None of that's a lie. One of Nathan's lessons: Don't lie if you don't have to; make the truth work for you when you can.

"How's he involved in this? Isn't he retired by now?" Tom asks, and his curiosity too is genuine, even when the naivety behind it is not. 

The agent opposite him blinks, and his pupils dart briefly to the left before settling on Tom. "He is," he says. His smile is bland and noncommittal. "Just checking up on your profile. Let's not concern ourselves with Muir."

Tom shrugs again, like he couldn't care less. "Whatever, man. It's ancient history. Let's just get this over with so I can finally get out of here. What do you need to know about Su Chou?"

#

He's still stuck in an interrogation room when Elizabeth is shipped off to the UK to stand trial for her involvement in the embassy bombing. They're sure to mention it, probably hoping it'll rattle him enough that he'll slip up, but it's nothing he hadn't expected.

There was never going to be a happy ending for him and Elizabeth. That's never what they were about. Even before Nathan had orchestrated her arrest, there'd been too much dishonesty, too many lies and secrets between them to build something. And after, in China, it was only about saving her, about assuaging the guilt for his part in it, for bringing her into Nathan's and the CIA's focus. He wasn't chasing some pipe dream of a future together, picket fences and domestic bliss.

#

The official version is that Nathan Muir assisted the CIA by providing valuable intel to prepare and shape Operation Dinner Out before entering his well-earned retirement.

Move on. Nothing to see there.

If you believe the legend (the one spoken in hushed whispers with furtive glances to ensure no one overhears), Nathan Muir played everyone, then he calmly walked to his car and drove off before anyone even noticed what he'd done, vanishing into thin air. There's no trace, no single lead on him that doesn't culminate in a dead end. 

It's been seven days since he's gone, and already he's become a ghost story.

#

Gladys looks tired, and Tom can only imagine she's been through the same exhaustive debriefing as him except with none of his experience. But her eyes are sparkling when she hands him a bottle of wine.

"Nathan left that for you. He thought you could use a drink after all that."

"Frankly, I could have used something a hell of a lot stronger than wine."

Her lips twitch. "Yeah, but that would have cost him, and you know Nathan. He's a cheap bastard."

Tom inspects the bottle. It's a 1985 Chianti. A decent vintage, but probably not too expensive, the year chosen more for effect than a matter of palate. The picture on the front displays a picturesque Tuscan landscape with green hills and serpentine roads. It looks peaceful, serene. A world away from the bombs of Beirut or the buzz of Berlin or the shrewd secrecy and duplicity of Langley.

He lets his thumb brush over the label, smiling at Gladys. "Guess I shouldn't complain. Sending flowers would have been cheaper. For Nathan, this is almost bankrupting himself."

There's a question in there he isn't entirely sure she will understand, but maybe she does, because she snorts with barely contained amusement. "I know, right? It's almost like he cares."

#

Tom waits three days before he packs his bags and buys a ticket to São Paulo.

He spends a week exploring all the touristy sights, dutifully snapping pictures and strolling through museums, hitting nightclubs and flirting with women who look a little like Elizabeth and guys who look nothing like Nathan.

Then he moves on, catching a plane to Manila. From there, Tokyo. Melbourne. Mumbai. Prague. Amsterdam. Ghent. Munich. In an Irish pub in Berlin, he lets a pretty dark-haired girl throw a dart on a world map to decide where he'll go next. It lands somewhere north of Oslo, but he figures it's close enough.

He's never been keen on traveling for fun. He's done too much of it for business – and usually the kind of business that ended with gunshots and explosions – to find the idea of exploring different places and cultures either relaxing or particularly exciting. People are people, and they're the same everywhere. (Jesus fucking Christ, he already sounds like Nathan.) Still, he tries to enjoy himself, or at least give the impression that he's enjoying himself, letting loose after years of duty and planning. 

In Paris, he finally manages to lose the agents who've been on his tail since he left the US. The CIA are clearly contenting themselves with the fact that he's not headed off for a clandestine meeting, not keen on wasting any more money, time and resources on someone who's proved to be a disappointment all-around and single-handedly put the new trade agreement with China at risk. 

Just to be careful, Tom heads to Vienna and St. Petersburg and Zurich before renting a car and, at last, making his way down to Tuscany.

#

The door opens when Tom gives it a gentle push, revealing Nathan lazily lounging in a chair, his forearm propped on his thigh with his gun trained at the entrance. Despite the position, he doesn't seem on high alert, as if the implied threat is mostly for show.

He fixes Tom with a look that, for all their history together, Tom can't read. It could be amusement or satisfaction just as well as it could be resignation. 

"You took your time." 

Considering they're the first words Nathan says to him in a little over six years, it's rude as fuck. Not that Tom expected any different. 

The gun doesn't waver. Tom doesn't bother raising his hands, but he takes care to keep them visible. "I needed to be sure I wasn't being followed. They're not too happy with you, back home." 

"Yeah?" Nathan's smile is thin and worn. "Did they send you after me?"

If the idea was any less ludicrous, Tom would feel insulted rather than amused. He snorts. "Right. Because my fuck-up in China proved such a stunning moral flexibility and ability to cut my losses. They were fishing in the debrief, but they didn't even bother to try and flip me on you."

He steps into the room and closes the door behind himself. He feels Nathan's eyes on him even when his back is turned, the stare impenetrable, as if Nathan's trying to find a trace of a lie, an inconsistency in Tom's behavior that will damn him. Whatever he sees must be enough to satisfy him because he puts the gun down on the table with an audible thud. 

The muscle under his eye twitches. "You were always too fucking loyal for your own good, kid. That bleeding heart of yours is gonna be the death of you one day."

It's the kind of speech that Tom would have bought into – _did_ buy into – fifteen years ago. Ten years. Six. Anytime before Nathan pulled the wool over the Agency's eyes right under their noses and risked it all by fabricating a fake operation to get Tom out of that Chinese hellhole.

He runs his hands over his face and laughs, more exasperation than genuine amusement at Nathan's insistence to keep playing a card even when it's already revealed to be a fake. "You're so full of shit, man. If you really bought into that 'cut'em losses and send flowers' spiel, you'd be sipping cocktails on Haiti, spending your retirement money, and I'd be dead in a ditch in China."

Nathan's mouth twitches. "Maybe your bad habits are rubbing off on me."

#

Nathan never asks, _Are you staying?_

The assumption is there, in the dinner on the stove, the guest room that's set up, the way Tom's bags mysteriously migrate there from the trunk of the car. 

Under different circumstances, the presumptuousness would set his teeth on edge. 

As it is, he just throws it in with all the other things they don't talk about, all the other questions they don't ask, all the other answers that are assumed and read between lines that have been blurring for a long time.

#

Nathan could do this forever, Tom thinks. Play the waiting game. Treat it like just another undercover assignment: the two of them playing house together in Tuscany, bland but loaded small talk with tension bubbling underneath, a life built on lies of omission.

It could be patience or cowardice, or perhaps Nathan's just so used to it that he doesn't even realize what he's doing.

Tom can't do that, not for long. Maybe it's what made him such a bad agent – his rashness, his impatience, the way he can never quite believe his own lies. How he can't let go of something he knows he should well leave alone.

He joins Nathan on the porch, leaning against the doorway and lighting up a cigarette because giving his hands something to do settles his nerves. It doesn't matter whether he's handling a gun or a lighter or a bottle, but getting drunk wouldn't be a smart idea and he doesn't want to deal with the temptation of shooting Nathan when his stubbornness gets inevitably frustrating, so smoking it is. 

"Why am I here, Nathan?"

Nathan doesn't look up from the book he's reading. "Do you have somewhere else to be?" 

He sounds distracted, and his eyes continue moving over the pages, but Tom would bet he has every ounce of Nathan's attention right now. 

Taking a few drags of the cigarette and blowing the smoke against the golden glow of dusk falling over the hills, Tom takes his time before responding. "You know exactly what I mean."

Nathan sets his book aside and stands, facing Tom. "You're here because I had Gladys give you a bottle of wine, and you were smart enough to figure out the clues and follow my trail. You're not asking the right questions, Tom."

 _Not asking the right_ fucking _questions._ Like Nathan's a mark Tom is trying to milk for intel. Why the fuck does Nathan insist on making everything harder than it has to be?

Tom flicks the cigarette down and crunches it under his heel, a little too viciously. It makes his anger plainly visible, and it's only going to give Nathan more ammunition, but what's the point in hiding his reaction when he's angling for truth? 

"Don't," he says, grabbing Nathan's arm when he pushes past Tom on his way inside. "Don't treat this like another fucking lesson. We're not on an assignment and you're not training me anymore. I'm not interrogating a hostile agent, I just want a straight answer to a simple question."

Nathan tries to pull away, but Tom tightens his grip. He feels the muscles in Nathan's arm shift and flex under the soft fabric of his shirt, sun-heated skin warm to the touch even through the layer of clothing. Nathan's face is half-obscured by shadows, but it's impossible to miss how his eyes narrow, steel-colored stare pinning Tom down. 

He moves too fast for Tom to counter as he twists out of the hold. Pushing Tom backwards against the door frame, his hand comes up to grip Tom's jaw a little too harshly and a little too bruising, making Tom expect violence. Instead, he gets Nathan's mouth on his, kissing him with the same kind of conviction and precision he does everything else. 

Tom relaxes into the punishing grip that eases a little as his tension bleeds away, letting Nathan take the lead, content to follow. He's always been following Nathan, from Vietnam all the way to Italy, so why should he stop now?

"Does that answer your question?" Nathan asks when he steps back.

Tom's lips twitch. "You could have used words, but I'm not complaining."

#

His head propped up on the pillow and turned to the window, Tom watches the moonlight cast long, unmoving shadows on the floor, black on dark blue hues. Behind him, Nathan's finger idly draws patterns across his naked back, a light but steady touch that keeps the low-level arousal burning in the pit of Tom's stomach. He's too exhausted to do anything about it, and even past midnight, the heat remains oppressive, but he enjoys the touch too much to stop Nathan.

"The Bahamas," Nathan says into the darkness of the room.

Tom frowns and twists his head around, thrown by the non-sequitur. "What?"

"Not Haiti. The Bahamas. That's where I'd been looking at for retirement."

Tom falls silent. He tries to imagine it – Nathan on some tropical beach, cocktail in hand, not a care in the world. It's a nice picture. It's also as unreal as imagining him on a spaceship conversing with little green men. 

Still. It's his fault that Nathan's plans fell through. "For what's worth it, I'm sorry," he says. 

"Don't sweat it. I'd probably have hated it."

"So, what? Hiding from the Agency in an old Italian farmhouse with a washed-up ex-operative is better?" 

He pushes because that's what he does, it's what _they_ do, what Nathan taught him to do. But also because he needs the reassurance that he didn't fuck Nathan's life over beyond repair.

In the dark, Nathan's smile flashes. Tom has enough experience with Nathan's fake smiles through the years – directed at superiors and fellow agents and quarries – to know that this one is real. "Wouldn't miss it for the world, kid."

End.


End file.
